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The Next Springwoods Village Rumor

THE NEXT SPRINGWOODS VILLAGE RUMOR “Just got off the phone with a Southwestern Energy employee and they announced they are building a new building. The building will be located on 45 near the Exxon Mobil campus. I remember a previous article stating something about there being more office buildings built in the Springwoods development. This is where I surmise it will be. It will be 10-stories high with room for expansion on an adjacent site. Completion date is set for 2014.” [Swamplot inbox] Map: Springwoods Village

People identify Sugar Land as sprawl. How? It just a city adjacent to Houston. If Houston wouldn’t exist, would Sugar Land be sprawl? How much of a gap between town to eliminate the classification of sprawl.

It’s easy to throw these terms around to bash how people WANT to live.

Unless I’m missing something, the whole thing seems like an egregious example of waste. You build Greenspoint 30 years ago and then for various reasons it’s no longer ideal, so do you improve it? Revamp it? No, you abandon it all and clear a new forest ten miles north for your new office park. And all the smaller companies that clustered around you there do likewise. And Greenspoint with its hundreds of acres of concrete just sits there like damaged goods.

So what happens in thirty years when Springwoods Village is no longer ideal, when the new wears off? Do you improve it and make it work, or do you jump another ten miles north where there’s another waiting forest and build your new campus there?

The irony is that I’m sure these buildings will be LEED-whatever certified and Exxon will tout itself as a great steward, but any environmentalist will tell you that the real way to conserve is to adapt & reuse, not just wantonly abandon & throw away.

When you’re trying to attract world-class talent, you need to locate your facility in an area where your potential employees would like to live. As much as I’d like to see Greenspoint cleaned up, leveling a few buildings and putting in a modern office park isn’t going to make that area appealing to professionals earning six figures. Big companies look for an area with amenities when they’re developing a major new complex – anything else puts them at a competitive disadvantage.

The Springwoods Village location is a great one for ExxonMobil. Proximity to the Woodlands is a big selling point for their recruiters. It’s also a win for the Houston area – the location isn’t out in the middle of nowhere – it’s between Downtown and a thriving suburb that has been around for almost four decades. The result will be more jobs, more tax revenue, and increased density in this satellite urban center.

And is the woodlands actually an enticing selling point for a 21 year old graduating college. I could see your point for families or older folk. I guess for me at 27, I find the woodlands to be bland. Not trying to start and inner loop vs outerloop fight but as an employee of the energy industry Spring/Woodlands/location is not a selling point for me. Thoughts?

I don’t think Mike would claim that Greenspoint is a better location that up north. I think he makes a valid point regarding the inefficiencies of real property development. The externalities of abandoned and obsolete buildings are not priced into the market. They are a burden that can frequently fall to the public in terms of diminished tax base and cost of dealing with everything from condemning dangerous buildings that are in disrepair to dealing with the stress on the drainage infrastructure from properties that are not performing on the tax rolls.

Ok, lets take your idea of redoing Greenspoint. The truth is that Greenspoint in terms of office space is quite good and doing very well with occupancy and could use some more.

The problem with Greenspoint is the residential component. So, the only solution to redo Greenspoint is to bulldoze the now low income housing and build offices there.

Also, the new location in Springwoods doesn’t have the engineering baggage to work around. Greenspoint is deep into the Greens Bayou floodplain. Under current city, county, and federal regulations, very little of Greenspoint could be developed today and once you demo some of it, you can’t rebuild it (unless you build it on high stilts)

Finally, land is still extremely cheap for large scale development. Why potentially ruin your project by trying to fix an area with plenty of more unknowns. Not every developer is into the gentrify game. Some are great at it and do it across the country. Many developers are better at working with blank slates.

The good news about Greenspoint is that the business community is active in improving the area. The Greenspoint Development District is actively building trails and trying to make the community a better place. The increase interest in office space in the area is raising commercial values which gives the district more funds for improvements.

The energy companies locating in the north are paying enough that young professional can have the choice to live near the office are live down in the loop and the driving cost aren’t bad since you don’t have to pay for a parking spot like you do in downtown.